I'm Drawing Pictures of Your God

The Eccentric Warden

Here's a puzzle I discovered recently, it was presented to me as a "Google Challenge", supposedly a question Google recruiters use to test the problem solving abilities of candidates.

Twenty prisoners are serving time in a backwater jail led by an eccentric warden. The warden has decided to play a game with the prisoners. He will lead the prisoners one at a time into a room with two switches. Each switch (the left and right one) may be in one of two states (ON or OFF). The prisoner must flip one and only one of the switches and then he is led back to his cell.

The warden decides in advance the methodology he is using to select which prisoner visits the room next. This methodology is kept a secret by the warden and the only guarantee is that if the game goes on forever, each prisoner will visit the room an infinite number of times.

The warden tells the prisoners these rules before the game begins, and says that any prisoner can stop the game before flipping a switch by declaring that all twenty prisoners have visited the room. If he is right, all the prisoners are set free, otherwise they are all executed!

All the prisoners are kept in isolation for the duration of the game and cannot communicate other than through using and observing the switches. However, before the game begins, the prisoners can meet to discuss their strategy. What should their strategy be?

Keep in mind that the warden may choose a methodology such as: "19 of the prisoners visit the room randomly until 10 years has elapsed. Afterwards, all 20 prisoners visit the room regularly." So it wouldn't be wise to use probability in your strategy, such as: "Well after 8 years, chances are we've all been to the room."

Green Mushroom Award: Professor Fizzwizzle

You may be wondering why I haven't been posting recently. Well, let's just say that I've been very busy.



On an unrelated topic, I want to tell you about a new game I've dicovered. Professor Fizzwizzle is a strange name for one of the best puzzle games I've ever played. The object of the game is to move the professor from the entrance of each level to the exit all the while avoiding Rage-bots (the professor's mechanical creations gone bad) who begin chasing the professor if they see him.

The professor can move left and right and climb ladders, but he can't jump. He can also push crates, but only one at a time. Barrels are like crates except they keep rolling once they are pushed. Magnets are also like crates except the positive ends stick to metal objects, and can repel other magnets.



Crates can be pushed over grass, but can't be pushed over sand. Barrels stop rolling on sand but can still be pushed. Also, on ice all objects continue to slide. Trampolines repel objects that slide/roll into them.

Platforms attatched to pulleys complicate things greatly, as do the colored switches that open correspondingly colored doors when objects move over them. To make things even more puzzling, there are inflatable objects you can get that allow you to place at a later time crates, barrels and magnets wherever you're currently standing.



There are also powerups such as the EMP which can be used once to disable Rage-bots that are chasing you, and temporarily cause magnets to loose their normal EM behavior. The Whistle can be used once to attract the attention of distant Rage-bots, and the Frost-Gun can be used to freeze crates, barrels and magnets to make them more mobile.

The game comes with great graphics, smooth gameplay, decent music and best of all, a fully featured level editor. You can get a demo at http://www.grubbygames.com which actually has many levels.

Sci-fi and Cinema

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3144311

Looks like there is going to be a Halo movie -- produced by Peter Jackson? I approve. Comic book adaptations and now video game adaptations. It makes sense to me. I think cinema has come a long way, and quite frankly most of the greatest and simplest stories that could be portrayed on screen have already been portrayed expertly by past directors. Right now we're scraping the bottom of the barrel to come up with new and interesting stories. How many movies out there remind you of others?



Not only do comics and video games contain fresh and interesting stories, but they can also explore aspects of humanity from new and enlightening angles. Science Fiction has the greatest potential for exploring interesting facets of humanity, and when taken seriously can yield amazing results.

I think it's important that comics and video games are being taken more seriously these days as wellsprings of creativity. And although it's true that the movie industry's move towards sci-fi blockbusters was primarily based on sci-fi's pop-culture influence on the current generation, movies like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and Spider Man 2 show not only that excellence in film making is possible, but also that fantastic plots are not incompatible with traditional dramas.



For instance look at The Matrix or Dark City. These movies reveal aspects of humanity not easily explored without science fiction elements. TV shows like Red Dwarf and Star Trek similarly explore uncharted waters.



I also think that cinematogrphy and direction style will be more and more important in future movies. We're slowly seeing the development of creative camera movements (eg Matrix), interesting special effects, color filtering, and atmospheric texturing through set design. These innovations will not only set the mood of future films but will also consume the story telling. The editing in Memento turns what would normally be a great story into an amazing cinematic experience told in a creative way that is wholly relevant and immediately engaging for the audience. I believe that not only editing, but cinemtography and directing style and even animation style will be the future playground for innovation, and that science fiction movies will provide the inspiration.

In the new movie Doom we're going to see another adaptation of a video game to a movie. There haven't been many of these, I can think of Resident Evil and Tomb Raider off the top of my head. We're also going to see extended sequences of a mobile first-person camera perspective (like in Being John Malkovich). I'm amazed that the persistent first person perspective hasn't been used more often in cinema. It is extremely effective when used and doesn't have to be jittery. I'm still waiting for a movie that is 100% first-person.

Conan

IMDB is an awesome site. It has tons of information and resources for almost every movie publicly released. Every movie has been reviewed and rated by thousands of movie junkies. It's fun to see what the general public's consensus is for how good a particular movie is. However, sometimes it's distressing to see good movies with extremely low rankings, and such is the case with Conan the Barbarian.



Conan the Barbarian features amazing direction, one of the best scores for any movie ever, impressive cinemtography, amazing action sequences, good special effects and decent acting all around. So why is it rated 6.5 on IMDB? I looked through the reviews, and the primary complaint is that Arnold is a bad actor. I find this particularly amusing since Arnold has very little to say in the movie's 2 hours. Even if the acting is bad, Arnold couldn't have wrecked the movie with so few lines. To prove my point here is everything Conan says in the movie:



> To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women.
> Crom!
> Snakes, did you say snakes?
> No.
> A standard, a symbol, perhaps on a shield. Two snakes, coming together, facing each other, but they're one.
> Yes.
> Crom.
> And who says you will?
> Who are you?
> So what are you doing here?
> What gods do you pray to?
> To Crom. But I seldom pray to him, he does not listen.
> He is strong. If I die I have to go before him, and he will ask me, what is the riddle of steel? And if I don't know he will cast me out of Valhalla and laugh at me. That's Crom, strong as this mountain.
> Crom laughs at your four winds. Laughs from his mountain.
> No, let's waste no time.
> It's good.
> Does it always smell like this? How does the wind ever get in here?
> They're all sluts! He's dead already. Can you believe that? Can you...
> Come let's leave this place.
> Can you summon demons, wizard?
> You care for these places?
> Do flowers grow around here?
> Oil the sword, and feed the horse.
> No.
> For a girl!
> I'm afraid.
> Could we talk over there, where the others can not see?
> I'm afraid and I'm shy. This is your robe? Priest's robe?
> Good, that's all you'll ever need.
> You killed my mother, you killed my father, you killed my people! You took my father's sword...
> The riddle of steel.
> Crom, I have never prayed to you before. I have no tongue for it. No one, not even you will remember if we were good men or bad, why we fought, or why we died. No, all that matters is that two stood against many. That's what's important. Battle pleases you Crom, so grant me one request, grant me revenge! And if you do not listen, then to hell with you!

http://www.barbariankeep.com/ctbds.html

Traveling Upstream

Some people use meditation to reach higher levels of consciousness. Does it work? Yes it does work. Achieving higher levels of consciousness is easy and I believe anyone can do it. Here is the method that has worked for me, it stems from a simple model of consciousness.



Every thought you have spawns another thought and another thought and yet another thought in a continuous stream. Think of each thought as a point on a spiral moving outward at incredible speed from the center. New thoughts are created at the center of the spiral and follow the path of the spiral around and outward over time.

The trick here is to take a hard look at the thoughts coming out of the center. The goal is to analyze the root cause of your thoughts. Ask yourself where are these thoughts coming from and focus your analysis on this. What you need to do is step back and allow your thoughts to encompass the framework that's generating them.



To do this you must look at each thought you have and analyze it to find the previous thought that spwaned it. As you analyze each thought as it moves away from the center of the spiral, you are of course creating new thoughts. These new thoughts are actually the ones doing the analysis. As you become aware of these new thoughts being created, you must jump from analyzing whatever thought you were analyzing to analyzing the new thought.

Eventually your current thought will be the same as your next thought and you will no longer be looking at your last thought, but your current one. When this occurs, your thoughts will be exposed and your consciousness will be briefly elevated. You will have a thought that recursively references itself.

Another visualization of what's happening here is a snake eating it's own tail. The object here is to think a thought that encompasses itself.

Deny Everything

(Note: Now updated with correct spelling!)

Who is this guy Pat Robertson and why is he such a liar?

What's even worse than suggesting that the US should assassinate Venezuelan president Chevez to solve our diplomatic differences, is his politician-like denial of his own statements.

I didn't say "assassination." I said our special forces should "take him out." And "take him out" can be a number of things, including kidnapping; there are a number of ways to take out a dictator from power besides killing him. I was misinterpreted by the AP, but that happens all the time.

Hmm. You didn't say assassination? What about this quote?

If he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war.

So he's right, he didn't say "assassination" he said "assassinate." He didn't use the passive noun form of the word, he used the present-tense verb form. Our mistake sorry about that, please continue.

I think we really ought to go ahead and do it.

Is Pat Robertson prepared to deny that we does not include him, and that it is not referring to the assassination of the Venezuelan president? If so, Mr. Robertson is abusing the English language in a remarkable mind-bending way.

As far as this quote is concerned:

We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one strong-arm dictator. It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.

So Mr. Robertson wants to "get rid of" Chevez and "take him out", and we need "covert operatives" to do it. Considering we were just talking about assassination as a cheaper solution than going to war, it's pretty reasonable to assume that Robertson is referring to assassination here to. But Robertson says he just wants to kidnap Chevez. Oh well, it's not as violent but this quote is just icing on the cake anyway.

I believe in freedom of speech and so I don't object to Robertson saying what he feels, I just don't like liars. Maybe Robertson forgot he said the first quote involving the words "assassinate" and "go ahead and do it", but you'd think that before correcting the press on the specific garbage that spewed from his mouth he'd check a transcript.

Even CNN reported that Pat Robertson denied calling for Chevez's assassination "despite contrary video evidence". I'm happy CNN is exposing Robertson's statements for all to see and standing up to his bullshit. The full video of Robertson's comments are available on their site. Gotcha Pat.

In conclusion, Pat Robertson is either a liar, an idiot, or both.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/08/24/robertson.chavez/index.html